[DoughtyOne]

Folks, shift into neutral, move over to the side of the road and press on the brakes during the process. Once stopped, turn the car off.

There’s no need for this to be the problem people are making it out to be.

It’s hard to avoid the fact that we are at least in part a nation of idiots.

[chrisser]

Folks, shift into neutral, move over to the side of the road and press on the brakes during the process

The Prius has a shift-by-wire system. The gearshift selector merely tells the PCM what gear is desired, and servo motors in the tranaxle performe the actual operation.

It seems conceivable that if the vehicle control systems are ignoring the driver inputs from the electronic accelerator pedal, they could also be ignoring the driver inputs from the electronic gear selector.

Here's a PDF from Toyota: https://techinfo.toyota.com/techInfoPortal/staticcontent/en/techinfo/html/prelogin/docs/2ndprius.pdf

"Electronic Gearshift Selector

The Prius elecronic gearshift selector is a newly developed momentary select shift-by-wire system that engages the transaxle in Reverse, Neutral, Drive, or engine Brake modes."